Top 10 Soft Skills Every Software Engineer Should Have

The literature on soft skills abound. A ton of business articles and academic studies all link soft skills to employee performance to business outcomes. Success is no longer viewed as a result of one man’s job even if they’re a genius. The hunt for a programming prodigy or coding virtuoso got replaced with a hunt for a well-rounded developer. Software engineer soft skills are as important as hard skills. 

As a business owner, you often have a unique set of soft skills yourself. It might be business acumen, being a visionary, or a strategist. You might do well in customer focus, have flexible decision-making, or possess a strong work ethic. You may have excellent networking abilities, easily see drawbacks, or identify potential opportunities. Sometimes it is your adventurous spirit that leads you to take a calculated risk and reap the rewards.

So what soft skills should a developer have? What practical situations made each soft skill a necessity for success? We will present our list of top ten skills and also discuss what is being commonly put in the ads for tech jobs. 

1. Soft Skill: Adaptability

One of the key questions a business owner asks oneself is Should your startup have a tech founder? We’ve discussed it in our article where we highlighted that technical knowledge leads to risk-averse behavior. At the same time, startups and lean methodology require a lot of flexibility. Building a minimum viable product (MVP) is a lot of fast change and continuous learning. For that, adaptability is the most important soft skill a software engineer should have.

In practice, having lots of technical knowledge, being stuck in best practices, or some patterns – is often a challenge. You may find an engineer who would argue for some feature until the face goes purple. That kind of engineer wins discussions by exhausting others. It is never productive or efficient. 

We must say, in certain settings, adaptability is not a required soft skill. For instance, projects where the development work follows a more traditional waterfall methodology. Or other methodologies with little to no deviations. Or agencies where work is planned out for months. This will be true for government or academic organizations. 

In contrast, the business world and the world of digital commerce are always about change, deviations, new knowledge, and uncertainty. It makes adaptability the most the most demanded software engineer soft skills.

2. Social Skill: Communication

Any team player should learn how to communicate well. To ensure productive interactions, we should learn important skills:

• How to point out a mistake or propose a better course of action;
• How to effectively present your solution
• How to communicate possible problems and discuss setbacks.
• And more.

Phrasing and delivering opinions and suggestions is an important skill. And it accompanies being a team player tightly. A person who is trying to be helpful but cannot communicate well can become a major obstacle to the project’s success. Imagine saying something in an accusatory manner, alienating others, and disrupting meetings. Instead, a good communicator can deliver their proposals smoothly and efficiently. 

For a team to work as a well-oiled machine, communication is exactly the oil. Hiccups and setbacks happen, but when communicated well, the project stays on track. If some deviations or digressions are needed, communication is the key to making this happen on time and within budget. 

3. Soft Skill: Team Player

Success is a result of collaborative effort. You may see a developer who:

• works in silos from others, 
• hoards knowledge, or 
• refuses to help. 
• Or, for example, that person spots the mistake or weak spot in somebody else’s code but keeps quiet. 
• Sometimes such developers would wait until the project is at a critical stage, and offer their insight to come out as a sole hero. 

As a result of such ‘lone wolf’ behavior, there is more damage than positive contribution. 

Even if we look at a scenario with a solo-developer project. There still will be a business owner, maybe a marketer or targetologist on the side. There might be another person doing the media content that needs to be embedded. So in any case the project is a collaborative effort, a teamwork. 

A developer must be good at working with others. A team player knows how to ensure productive group interactions. A team player values an opportunity to contribute to an overall effort. 

4. Soft Skill: Self-awareness

This skill often translates into being humble and appreciating learning opportunities. The technological landscape is constantly changing. A software engineer who feels that they’ve mastered what they need to… always will be in the wrong. And the self-aware kind will always be on top of their game. 

It is the same as for the business owner being aware of what the competition is doing. One cannot be pushing a film for a camera when everyone is going digital, so to speak. 

Of course, in a developer’s workplace, the day-to-day is not so drastic. It might be:

– a new package or module that will help solve a business problem more efficiently.

– a new syntax or way to solve a coding problem. 

There is always something new and better or more efficient.

In addition, a self-aware person seeks out feedback. Maybe they can improve their documentation writing. Or extending to teamwork, how can a developer document/comment code for others to better do their bits? Those are simple things that can make any project an enjoyable ride to success. 

5. Social Skill: Patience

We have a ton of reasons to finally mention this soft skill.

• It was hard to imagine an impatient developer 10 years ago. But as things sped up and shortcuts became commonplace, patience became valued as never before. 
• Plus, changing business demands and faster development cycles can be testing developer’s patience. 
• The craftsmanship also plays a role in why patience is important. Professional engineers often need a lot of patience to meticulously go through the details. 
• In development, every symbol matters. So, sometimes, especially with ‘boring’ tasks losing focus for a minute might cause a major error down the road.

6. Social Skill: Curiosity

Not every development agency recognizes the need for this soft skill among software developers. Yet, the skill is as old as the job… There are even a ton of memes depicting a software developer exclaiming after running a piece of code: “My code works – I have no idea why” and “My code doesn’t work – I have no idea why”. 

And as much as the MVP creation process appreciates the process of trial and error – producing code would be not exactly the area where its use is justified. We appreciate it when the developer is curious enough to look under the hood, check the documentation, test on another machine, etc. 

Lack of curiosity is often a root cause of many developer VS QA clashes. QA reports a bug, and a developer checks and ’closes’ the issue claiming “It works well on my machine”. This is never productive and is a waste. Any good lean development agency cuts the losses and dismisses such kind of a developer. 

However, there are ways to check for that soft skill during the technical interview as well. 

• A curious developer will always give extra reasoning for the solution. 
• This kind of developer won’t be afraid to say: “I am not 100% sure, but I know that I will check it in documentation X “. Or “I can test it running in Y environment”. 
• This kind of developer will also know and be able to insert ‘interesting facts’ in their tech interview. Such as something they’ve read about. Like the update or change in documentation and how it affected the operating apps.   

7. Personal effectiveness: Time Management

This software engineer soft skill is listed only as 7th, but it is still a must-have. This is because this soft skill is not specific to software engineers. Anyone can set up oneself for failure with poor time management. And also take a whole team down. Even the simplest task could go horribly wrong if performed last minute. 

Cutting it close might have worked at school, but the situation is reversed at the workplace. Even the most difficult problem can be solved if approached in a timely manner. Yep… another proof that school does not prepare for real life. So this skill is especially important to be on the lookout for …among fresh graduates straight from the university.

8. Soft Skill: Critical Thinking

This skill is vital for engineers. Solving any problem requires thinking about it critically, collecting the information, synthesizing and analyzing it, reflecting on it, discussing, reasoning etc. But most importantly, for software engineers, critical thinking translates into not taking anything at face value.

Why is this important? 

First, overuse of tech jargon. For example, microservice architecture is now like a new fashion trend. It provides a ton of benefits like scalability, encapsulation/modularity, security…and a lot more. A new jargon word is ‘microservices nirvana’. But this still is a path mainly for large projects (complex and 2+ years in length). They will still have a significant overhead. And engineers must question its applicability to smaller projects and MVPs.

Second, AI. With AI at everyone’s fingertips, suddenly everyone feels like a domain expert. All these tech influencers without practical experience or with very limited one. Or those who aim to become a ‘thought leader’…. The amount of knowledge generated daily exponentially skyrocketed. The quality of it follows the reversed trend. So when AI-produced sources are utilized for commercial decision-making, it is a threat. They must be critically examined. Facts, statistics, etc – a lot of it is fake and false these days and must be checked before used. 

9. Personal effectiveness: Prioritizing

Developers work in teams. For each developer, there is a main task queue and a queue with tasks popping up which seems like at random. 

• A project manager might have a question or request. 
• A team member might require assistance or feedback. 
• A bug suddenly appears. 
• And plus, there are company-wide issues. 
• And whatnot. 

It all seems important, but we all know… “When everything’s important, nothing is important”. 

So, a developer who knows how to prioritize for the success of the project is a great find. 

10. Emotional Intelligence

To be honest, many developers still feel like emotional intelligence is some voodoo magic. Many legitimately claim that:

 “I am not sure how I am feeling, how would I know what others feel?” 

It is all legit, but. In software engineering, we all must come to terms with the ‘sad’ fact that our users are driven by emotion. 

So, to get going with Emotional Intelligence at workplace, a developer can adopt user-centric mindset. For instance, every project has user personas these days. It will help if a developer imagines this person’s day and thinks:

• What frustrations may this persona have after their ‘challenging/exhausting…’ day when they sit for an interaction with our app?
• When it is app testing time, analyze user clicks – are there ‘rage’ click areas? Why?
• When reading user feedback, perceive it with empathy. 
•  Factor in emotional impact and not only efficiency of the interface.

This is a very simplified list of points, but a good place to start.

What about job ads?

Unfortunately, not all of these skills would show up on job advertisements. A rigorous cross-cultural study was conducted in 2016 by a team of scientists to examine the soft-skills requirements in job ads for the following positions:

• System analyst;
• Software designer;
• Computer programmer;
• Software tester;

Three skills show up consistently:

• Communication;
• Analytical thinking or problem-solving;
• Team player.

Why is that? Does it mean that the skills we listed are not necessary? 

No. First, sometimes employers just expect a developer to have them.

Second, they can just test such skills during HR interviews in passing.

Third, there is a powerful training industry – so the software engineer’s soft skills might be included in the Learning & Development plan. 

Software Engineer Soft Skills: FAQ